A chill wind, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant peat fires, seemed to seep into the very stones of Aethelgard Academy. Two days after the unsettling encounter in the recovery wing, a sliver of parchment, folded meticulously small, surfaced within my cubby in the ancient changing rooms. It rested amidst my pressed fencing whites, a stark contrast to their stark precision.
“*Might you spare a moment in the disused boiler room before athletics drill today?*
* – L.C.”*
My fingers, usually so steady, traced the delicate script. For a fleeting instant, a ludicrous thought sparked: a clandestine confession. Then, a dry, bitter laugh caught in my throat. This was Aethelgard, a bastion of strict scholastic discipline and an all-male institution. Such romantic folly was a notion swiftly dismissed, an absurdity that barely brushed the edges of my analytical mind.
Indeed, the note slipped from my immediate consciousness, a minor perturbation in the intricate currents of academic concerns. Only as the final peal of the bell signaling the transition to the fourth period echoed through the vaulted corridors, calling us to the rigorous athleticism required for the weekly drills, did its instruction return with a jolt of inconvenient clarity.
Changing into the academy’s stiff grey drill uniform, my gait was measured, a carefully constructed façade of indifference. A peculiar flicker of curiosity, a faint, almost unwelcome warmth, stirred beneath my ribs. Who would seek my presence in such a forgotten corner of the west wing? Who, among the hundreds of young men confined within these hallowed, yet suffocating, walls?
Sounds of distant shouts and the rhythmic thud of feet on polished oak floors faded as I descended to the academy’s lowest levels. Dampness clung to the air, tasting of ancient stone and the metallic tang of disused pipes. A faint glow from a grimy windowpane cut through the pervasive gloom, illuminating motes of dust dancing in the stagnant air. Before the rusted door of the disused boiler room, I paused, a fleeting regret for this detour unsettling my usual composure.
Pushing open the heavy door, a squeal of rusted hinges rent the silence. Within the cavernous space, shadows writhed and stretched, clinging to the skeletal remains of forgotten machinery. My gaze snagged upon a figure hunched on an overturned bucket, his head bowed, fingers worrying at a loose thread on his trousers. Lysander Croft. His black hair, usually so neatly pressed, seemed to droop with the weight of his timidity. He started, a small, bird-like jump, as the door scraped shut behind me.
“Lysander?” My voice, always a low murmur, seemed unnaturally loud in the echoing space. A frown, a familiar tightening between my brows, marred the studied calm of my expression. His small head snapped up, revealing eyes that darted about with the frantic uncertainty of a caged bird.
He offered a fragile, almost apologetic smile, a ghostly echo of the bright, guileless grin he’d worn when first transferring to Aethelgard. That particular expression, so transparently eager for acceptance, had always chafed at me, a constant reminder of a vulnerability I disdained.
“What is it, Lysander? Why this sudden summons?” My tone, though carefully modulated, carried an edge of impatience.
His plump fingers, ceaselessly nervous, began to twist into knots, a contorted tangle that mirrored the knot tightening in my own gut. “Ah, Elias… I… I have something I wish to impart…”
“Speak it, then.” A cold draft seemed to sweep through me. I wished fervently to be elsewhere, anywhere but trapped in this sepulchral space with Lysander. The thought of being discovered, alone with him, sparked a visceral dread. Whispers, like insidious ivy, could entwine around even the most innocuous of encounters, staining reputations, drawing unwelcome scrutiny. I had always offered Lysander a precisely measured degree of civility – enough to avoid accusations of unkindness, never enough to invite genuine connection. This precarious balance now felt threatened.
Lysander, oblivious to the turbulent currents beneath my placid exterior, resumed gnawing at his thumb. His gaze skittered across the peeling paint of the walls, the defunct gauges of the boiler, everywhere but my face. Indecision warred with a nascent determination in his watery eyes. Each time he seemed on the cusp of speech, his mouth clamped shut, a silent battle playing out upon his features.
My irritation, a slow-burning ember, flared. Lysander’s perpetual hesitance, his fidgeting, had always pricked at my composure. His small, almost childlike mouth, twitching with unspoken words, might have been deemed endearing by others. To me, it was merely an intolerable manifestation of weakness, a mirror to a part of myself I loathed.
Perhaps, I conceded in a fleeting moment of ruthless honesty, I was overly sensitive. Lately, a dull ache had taken root in my stomach, a persistent churn that underscored the gnawing anxiety festering within me. My thoughts, a tangled skein of frustration and confusion, often left me feeling brittle, poised to shatter. It was a vicious irony that I sought to avoid attention, yet my inner landscape raged with a tempest of emotion, forever threatening to breach the fragile walls I had constructed.
“Lysander, forgive me, but fencing practice approaches. Must you not hasten your words?” A sharp, almost cutting edge crept into my voice.
As these unwelcome reflections churned, Lysander finally seemed to wrestle his courage to the surface. A small, stammering utterance escaped him, barely audible above the rhythmic drip of a leaking pipe.
“E-Elias… I… you see, I…”
“Yes?” My response was flat, almost a dismissal. My fingers absently massaged my neck, the rough wool of my uniform scratching against my skin. The break was waning. A dark, intrusive thought flashed: to prise open his mouth, to extract the words myself.
Just then, the rusted door of the boiler room burst inward, tearing the oppressive silence. Both Lysander and I flinched, our heads snapping towards the sudden intrusion. Alaric Vance stood framed in the doorway, his chest heaving, his face flushed and glistening with sweat. His eyes, however, weren't on me. They were fixed, with an alarming intensity, upon Lysander.
Heavy, gasping breaths tore from Alaric’s lungs. A suffocating tightness gripped my own chest as I pictured him, his usual composure shattered, racing through the ancient halls in search of Lysander. Alaric exhaled, a long, drawn-out sound that seemed to carry the weight of his furious exhaustion. Then, with a predator’s stride, he advanced into the room.
Unconsciously, my hand dropped from my neck, a subtle tremor running through my arm. Alaric’s gaze, a swift, terrible thing, flickered between Lysander and me. His expression was a storm cloud of possessive rage, a raw, untamed fury that distorted his aristocratic features. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, knuckles bone-white.
“Why are you here with him?” The question, a low growl, was aimed at neither of us specifically, yet it resonated through the damp air, a demand that brooked no evasion.
Beneath my outward stillness, my insides felt as though they were being relentlessly pounded by an unseen hammer. After a protracted, agonizing silence, Alaric’s burning gaze finally settled on me. The way he looked at me, a mixture of betrayal and raw accusation, was unbearable. It stripped away my carefully constructed indifference, leaving me exposed and vulnerable.
“Alaric, what is this?” My voice was barely a whisper, imbued with a desperate plea.
*Please, please, not this. Do not look at me like that. Blame Lysander, not me. He summoned me. I am merely an unwilling participant. Why would you, my—your supposed confidant, stare at me with such venomous resentment? I am caught in this tangled web, ensnared by his whim.*
Even as these silent protests raged within, Alaric’s eyes remained fixed, burning into me. I recognized their quality, chillingly so. They were not eyes inflamed by passion, but by a consuming rage, a virulent jealousy, a madness born of obsession. It was the face of a man utterly consumed, deranged by a love so twisted it bordered on abhorrent. It was a face I found both pitiable and utterly repulsive.
“Why are you here with him!” His voice, raw and ragged, cracked with the force of his emotion.
*You are pathetic, Alaric. So utterly pathetic.* I glared back, a cold defiance hardening my own features. Yet, in that moment, a sickening realization washed over me: perhaps the truly pathetic one was not him, but me.
Before I could fully process the thought, Alaric’s long strides had eaten the distance between us. His face, contorted by a furious mask, loomed inches from mine. A sudden, jarring impact, like a crack of thunder, resonated through my skull. The world reeled.
“...!”
I couldn’t even grasp what had transpired. My body toppled, a graceless heap against the cold, damp floor. Only then, with a sickening lurch, did my mind replay the impossible sequence of events.
*No. Impossible.*
He had struck me.
Alaric Vance, my Alaric, had struck me.
Lying there, a dull throb blooming across my cheek, my trembling fingers reached to touch the rapidly numbing skin. The sheer disbelief was a leaden weight in my chest. *How could you? How could you do this to me?*
“E-Elias!” Lysander, a horrified whimper tearing from him, scrambled towards me.
“You worm! You were told to stay away! Do not even speak my name, you insolent wretch!” Alaric’s roar was an animalistic scream, utterly devoid of the refined cadences of Aethelgard. Lysander froze, his face draining of all colour at Alaric’s furious visage, his tentative hand hovering uselessly.
“I-I’m deeply sorry, I’m truly sorry.” Lysander’s voice was a barely audible squeak.
“You vowed! You bloody vowed, damn you!”
Lysander recoiled, tears already welling in his wide, frightened eyes. Yet, it was not he who should be weeping. It was I. A burning sensation, a terrible wellspring of humiliation and pain, welled behind my own eyes, threatening to breach its fragile dam.
Mercifully, before I could utterly shatter, Alaric spewed a final, venomous curse. He seized Lysander by the arm, his grip surely bruising, and dragged him from the room. It was a swift, brutal departure, leaving only the reverberating echoes of their conflict.
Left sprawled on the grimy floor, I stared at the half-open door. A thin shaft of weak afternoon sun, filtering through the gap, illuminated a cloud of dust. Something inside me, a core of carefully maintained composure, finally gave way. The dam burst. Tears, hot and bitter, coursed down my face, mingling with the sting of the blow.
I hated it all. Lysander, for his cowardly plea, for dragging me into this sordid drama. Alaric, for his unrestrained violence, for shattering the last vestiges of my self-possession. I wished them both to simply vanish, to be erased from my existence. A profound, nauseating misery washed over me, the wretched realization that I was merely a bystander, a prop in their grotesque, twisted affair.
Slowly, shakily, I rose. Skipping the remainder of the athletics drill, a violation of academy protocol, felt insignificant. My swollen, reddened face, a raw testament to the morning’s brutality, provided a perfectly believable excuse for an early dismissal from the infirmary. Head-warden Hawthorne, a kindly, if perpetually harried, man, offered a sympathetic nod, seemingly understanding without needing to probe the depths of my humiliation.
---
At home, within the hushed sanctity of Thorne Manor, I collapsed onto my bed, the heavy velvet drapes drawn against the encroaching grey light. Exhaustion, a bone-deep weariness, claimed me, dragging me into a fitful slumber. When I next awoke, the faint, bruised ache in my cheek had solidified into a throbbing certainty. My face, I knew, must be a ghastly puff of purple and red.
Out of habit, my hand sought the small, leather-bound messaging slate I kept by my bedside. Its luminescent display flickered to life. A single missive from Julian Thorne. We rarely exchanged direct communication, our paths crossing primarily through the intricate social dance orchestrated by Alaric and his coterie. Julian, second in influence only to Alaric amongst our year, was not a presence one could afford to ignore. That thought, a bitter, humiliating one, pricked at me.
“*Thorne. Disappeared rather abruptly from practice. All well?*” The message, nearly three hours old, carried Julian’s characteristic bluntness. I clicked my tongue, a sound of self-reproach, and formulated a reply, striving for an air of detached nonchalance.
“*Haha. Not feeling entirely myself today.*” I kept it deliberately light, a brittle shield against exposure. The thought of anyone, *anyone*, learning of Alaric’s violent outburst, particularly over Lysander, was an unbearable mortification. My reputation, my carefully cultivated image of quiet diligence, would be irrevocably tainted.
Julian’s next message arrived almost instantly: “*Are you quite alright?*”
Concern. From Julian. A cold, alien sensation prickled at my skin. It felt… wrong. Shutting off the slate, I cast it onto the velvet comforter, the soft landing doing little to assuage my unease.
Hr. A profound wave of sadness, cold and desolate, washed over me. Even Julian’s perfunctory concern felt suffocating, another layer of expectation I could not meet. Messages from other classmates, academic acquaintances, flickered on the slate when I hesitantly glanced at it later. None of them, however, contained the one thing I secretly yearned for. None bore Alaric’s name. I must be mad, truly unhinged, to harbor such a desperate longing. Yet, a sliver of irrational hope, pathetic and self-destructive, clung to me. This, I reasoned, was the wretched fate of one caught in the orbit of maddening, possessive love. Even knowing the truth, the sickening truth of Alaric’s affections for Lysander, I lay there, supine and foolish, doing what I did best: closing my eyes, willfully blind to the harsh reality.
“…I am not alone,” I whispered into the oppressive stillness of my room. Perhaps Lysander and I were caught in the same, terrible predicament. A strange, twisted, grotesque thought, like a nascent tendril of ivy, began to unfurl in my mind. A selfish, wicked, childish hope, that in our shared misery, there might be a perverse solace. As I stared blankly at the ornate ceiling, another message chirped from the slate, the sound jarring in the silence. An unknown number.
“*Elias, are you feeling very unwell?*”
A frown furrowed my brow. Who, among my peers, would address me so familiarly, with such an earnest, almost solicitous tone? Julian? No, not his number. Before I could process the implications, a follow-up arrived, relentless and infuriating.
“*I’m so very sorry. Truly sorry. It is all my fault.*”
“*I’m sorry.*”
“*Please forgive me.*”
Whether it was three words or four, each one grated against my raw nerves, each one ignited a fresh surge of impotent fury. I flung the slate, a heavy thud marking its impact against the thick carpet. How had that cowering wretch acquired my personal number? And how, for that matter, was someone who reputedly owned no such device sending these ceaseless, suffocating apologies?
Then, a sickening jolt of memory. Oh. I had called him, hadn’t I? That night, after Cassian’s ominous warning about Alaric, a moment of fleeting compassion, an attempt at a quiet warning…
I cursed my own idiotic brain, a guttural sigh of pure vexation escaping me. To vent the tempest of frustration swirling within, I pounded my fists into the mattress, the rhythmic thudding a poor substitute for the visceral rage I yearned to unleash. Eventually, exhaustion claimed me once more, pulling me into a restless sleep. Just before consciousness fully receded, one last message, unread, unspoken, lingered in my thoughts.
“*Please, don’t hate me.*”
*Funny*, I thought, a bitter, mirthless twist in my gut. *I have hated you for months.*
When morning light, a watery grey, seeped through the drapes, my face felt like a distended, painfully bruised mask.
---
I skipped the academy. Regardless of my reputation as a model student, a face so conspicuously marred was not a sight I was willing to present to the scrutinizing eyes of Aethelgard. The estate-warden, a plump, kindly woman named Mrs. Finch, brought my luncheon. A soft, bland porridge, accompanied by a small dish of seasoned mushrooms, precisely the sort of meal suitable for an indisposed young gentleman. She couldn’t resist a gentle scolding, urging caution, a greater attentiveness to my steps. I swallowed the lukewarm contents, barely tasting them, the textures a uniform mush in my mouth.
As I set down the spoon and reached for a glass of spring water, Mrs. Finch returned to clear the dishes. Her hand, plump and comforting, rested briefly on my shoulder.
“Elias, a visitor has called for you.”
“A visitor?” My heart, a skittish bird, fluttered in my chest. Before I could even identify the emotion, my mind, quick and eager, had already conjured a specific image.
Could it be… Alaric? It seemed an outrageous fantasy, utterly divorced from the brutal reality of yesterday. Yet, it was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility. Few at the academy knew the precise location of Thorne Manor. Only a select handful, those within Alaric’s intimate circle, had ever set foot within its grand, silent walls. If it were he, then surely he had come to atone, to apologize, finally succumbing to the weight of his guilt. Alaric had never, not once, raised a hand to me before. He must have been consumed by worry, by remorse. He *must* have.
“Yes, Mrs. Finch, please, admit them.” The fantasy solidified into a fragile, desperate certainty. Even as a voice of cold reason within me chastised my naiveté, a small, treacherous sense of satisfaction bloomed. Despite everything, I remained, in some essential way, significant to him. That thought, irrational and dangerous, filled me with an inexplicable, fragile warmth. I turned towards the grand oak door of the drawing-room, my pace quickening with a surge of misguided anticipation.
But the figure waiting there was not the one my foolish heart had so desperately hoped for.
“Elias. What is this?” Julian Thorne’s sharp-featured face, usually etched with an easy, mocking smirk, crumpled into an expression of genuine shock. He held a small, neatly wrapped parcel, presumably a pastry from the town’s esteemed confectioner. His gaze, unblinking, fixed upon my swollen, discolored cheek.
My knees almost buckled, not from physical pain, but from the sudden, visceral plunge of crushing disappointment. How, in the name of all that was logical, had Julian Thorne even located Thorne Manor? My mind, a whirlwind of shame, scrambled for a response.
“I… fell,” I replied, my voice flat, devoid of inflection. The lie tasted like ash.
Julian’s brow furrowed, his lips twisting in that characteristic, sardonic curve he adopted before delivering a barb. “You truly are an utter dolt, aren’t you?”
I offered no argument. My fingers, almost independently, rose to rub my throbbing cheek. A fresh wave of embarrassment, hot and stinging, washed over me. The memory of my earlier, absurd hope for Alaric’s presence, of my eagerness, made me despise myself. I was an idiot. Alaric did not consider me important. And here I had been, like a pathetic, hopeful dog, wagging its tail for scraps of attention—a complete, utter moron.
“Here. Take this.” Julian extended the parcel, a small box tied with a thin silk ribbon. I accepted it mechanically, peeling back the lid to reveal its contents. Small, delicate sugar biscuits, dusted with a fine, green powder.
“…Matcha,” I murmured, a faint irony in my voice.
“Is it? Scarcely noticed the flavor.” Julian shrugged, his attention already elsewhere.
“Naturally. Why would you care?” The words, sharp and bitter, escaped before I could temper them.
Julian’s smirk returned, a fleeting shadow. “By the gods, that’s rather cutting, even for you, Thorne.”
“What, precisely, is the purpose of your unannounced visit?” I asked, my voice edged with a weary resignation.
“The purpose? To ascertain your well-being, of course. Mind if I step inside?” Without awaiting an answer, his long, languid legs carried him past me, a casual invasion of my personal space.
“Hold! Where are you going?” I demanded, a futile protest.
“Where else? There are only so many rooms in your abode.” He glanced back, a faint amusement in his eyes.
I had no retort. He was, infuriatingly, correct. These grand, imposing houses, for all their sprawling grandeur, all shared the same predictable structure. Feeling awkward, utterly out of sorts, I followed Julian, who seemed uncharacteristically intent on scrutinizing every detail of my ancestral home’s interior, a casual trespasser in the hallowed halls of my own misery.